


kiss your knuckles before you punch me in the face

by incurableromancer



Category: The Old Guard (Comics), The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: 5 +1 head bonks, 5+1 Things, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, Fluff, Getting Together, Immortal Husbands Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, M/M, nicky is a flat earther
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:47:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28490391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/incurableromancer/pseuds/incurableromancer
Summary: Maybe some of the words get lost in the caverns of language between them, maybe they don’t. Yusuf only rams his head into Nicolo’s in earnest with one more snarl, making his brain pound unbearably against his skull for just a moment, but by the time it feels better (it’s always fast, with this new strange afterlife) Yusuf has snatched up both of their waterskins and begun to make his way back to the stream, through the dark, alone.Or: Five times that Yusuf and Nicolo head-butted each other out of anger, fear, or boyish rivalry, and one time they did it out of tenderness.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 29
Kudos: 409





	kiss your knuckles before you punch me in the face

**Author's Note:**

> So listen, I know that the flat earth error in medieval European scholars is a misconception. HOWEVER, I headcanon Nicky growing up as a humble man of the people, one of whom history forgets, home boy was NOT highly educated until after becoming immortal and therefore, for the comedic purposes of this fic, he was a flat earther of the sort who simply never had reason to think otherwise. 
> 
> The details about the setting in this fic come from sources in an Islamic history course I took and from personal reading on Ibn Battuta, but of course all errors or misrepresentations are my own.

1.

A sound like a growl rumbles up from deep within Yusuf’s chest, and Nicolo is helpless not to snarl back, angrily baring his teeth when Yusuf’s forehead knocks painfully against his own. Always one to stand his ground, he curses, trembling with contempt. His fingers twist into the cloth covering Yusuf’s chest, his own angry breaths and spit coating Yusuf’s face, his beard, just as Yusuf’s spatter out onto his own skin.

Though they ceased the killing weeks ago, he’s almost tempted to lift his fingers higher to strangle some sense into this imbecile he’s found himself tied to, by destiny, or fate, or by the laws of whatever strange purgatory or hell that this existence is, whatever violent rejection from the absolution the pope promised. He hasn't decided yet which he believes. 

_“Bastard._ You will _never_ do that again.”

Yusuf has the fire of all of their weeks of travelling together clotted in his throat, darkening his cheerful voice like soot, scratchy and raw. It’s infuriating, the blaze in his eyes. (Nicolo can’t recognize the fear underneath, yet.)

This is stupid. Clearly there’s been some misunderstanding. All Nicolo did was sign the cross over the water they’re boiling over the fire, blessing it, whispering a quiet prayer to keep the sickness away that seized them both briefly after drinking from the stream just that morning. Obviously Yusuf was too stupid to understand what he’d been doing, because the fury of the battlefield they’ve left behind blazed in his face as he looked over his shoulder at the sound of Nicolo’s voice, saw the signed cross and stomped over and upended the water over the fire before charging at Nicolo like a cross horse. Maybe he’d thought Nicolo had been trying to curse him, make him sick again with the water he would have to drink. (That’s exactly what he’d thought.)

Under Nicolo’s own loathing, there’s that unease, that prickling, the growing awareness of what the cross and those who bear it, what _Nicolo_ has done, here, as opposed to what he believed he'd been doing. Clearly that’s a part of this anger, but he isn’t ready to back down. Not yet.

“Fine! See if I ever try to pray for your health again! But you can’t stop me from asking God to keep _me_ from illness while I put up with your bullshit!”

Maybe some of the words get lost in the caverns of language between them, maybe they don’t. Yusuf only rams his head into Nicolo’s in earnest with one more snarl, making his brain pound unbearably against his skull for just a moment, but by the time it feels better (it’s always fast, with this new strange afterlife) Yusuf has snatched up both of their waterskins and begun to make his way back to the stream, through the dark, alone.

Whatever. He can get cut down by thieves or bitten by snakes and spiders and beasts, he can get lost among the trees or the sands of the desert, he can die endlessly for all Nicolo cares, and hopefully he won’t come back this time.

(Nicolo tells himself it’s the hunger that keeps him awake, the thirst. Truthfully, he is able to fall soundly to sleep as soon as he hears the telltale scuffling of Yusuf lugging their water back to camp, his grumbling to himself about asshole invaders and disgracing God’s good name with petty curses and ugly, scary eyes that haunt his nightmares.)

2.

Today they are fighting about the direction in which to take their travels.

Nicolo can admit that he is out of his element, here. Yusuf has found them safe places to sleep, and orchards from which to harvest olives and figs and dates and pomegranates, places to bathe and to drink from. He knows how to flatter and exchange goods and services for favours and accommodations, and it seems that he is a likeable guy in general, sweet and personable to everyone but Nicolo, because when they stop in villages and cities, there is no shortage of people for him to talk to while Nicolo hangs back. His prayers are often done in beautiful mosques with the company of many others, and he seems to have no trouble finding camaraderie among strangers, people that would be happy to offer him a place among them. Nicolo quietly wonders why he always returns to grumpily seize him by the sleeve and drag him to wherever it is they’re sleeping that night, even when Nicolo manages to find people who seem willing to tolerate him, when Yusuf could leave him behind without guilt.

There have been just as many insufferable spells in the desert as comfortable nights as guests or in safe places. Certainly there have been no shortage of run-ins with men intent on killing them and robbing them blind, it’s true. But if Nicolo were leading, there would have been no safety or orchards or water or people for Yusuf to pray with, because Nicolo is neither a traveller or a navigator, he never has been. He is not familiar with this place.

He should trust Yusuf. He knows this. But Yusuf never explains where they’re going, or why they are going where they are going, not until they get there, and the silences between them stretch long and desolate. Nicolo likes to learn. He likes to ask questions when he knows he is in the company of somebody with answers, and he is beginning to suspect that Yusuf might just be a highly intelligent person. He seems to have nothing _but_ answers, in fact, but he won't share them, not with Nicolo. It's infuriating.

If anything, right now, he just wants to hear Yusuf explain to him why it is that they’re continuing on their own today rather than joining up with the caravan that they’ve just crossed paths with. They’ve been trekking for long days, and Nicolo is tired.

“Why couldn’t we join them, Yusuf? Are you too stupid to admit we need help? Are you that prideful? That selfish?”

(Nicolo has never been good at figuring out how to get a reaction without goading.)

Yusuf rounds on him with a scoff, eyes blazing. Nicolo steels himself, angry, but pleased that he’s about to get some answers.

“You call me stupid? Prideful? Selfish?” He spits at Nicolo’s feet, cracking their foreheads together the way that’s growing familiar. It means he’s infuriated with Nicolo, but there’s no danger of him drawing a weapon or hitting with his hands, not unless Nicolo strikes first. “Tell me, genius, if you are so smart, where would we have procured the fee they were asking, since they had no need for security? And why the fuck would we join a caravan heading all the way to Medina right now, when Baghdad is only a few more days in this direction? Or did you want to seize and destroy that holy site, too?”

Nicolo exhales, deflating. These are answers he might have picked up on himself if his grasp on the dialect Yusuf spoke while conversing with the men leading the caravan had been a little stronger. Perhaps if he and Yusuf spoke more.

Yusuf only scoffs again, whirling around and continuing their trek, expecting Nicolo to follow him.

Nicolo does.

3.

Things are better. Out of some fatal combination of boredom and frustration, they’ve begun to speak more to each other. It makes the arguments less explosive and violent, at least, now that they need to reach a point of verbal conclusion rather than knocking each other out to guarantee silence, or wait for somebody to stomp away in anger.

Today, they are walking from what Nicolo understands to be Yusuf’s father’s business friend’s home just outside of Baghdad to a village not far off. Yusuf’s been put to work under this friend, an older man who smiles often and, to Nicolo’s fascination, makes _Yusuf_ smile often (Nicolo is mildly chagrined to realize he hadn’t believed he _could_ , had been shocked to see crinkles by his eyes and hear laughter from his lips for the first time), teases him by pulling on his curls and calling him _little man_ , telling stories of Yusuf as a boy, chubby cheeked and well-liked, apparently a popular story-teller and a joker even back then.

Yusuf didn’t tell Nicolo what he said to convince the man to let him stay too, nor even why he hasn’t left Nicolo to fend for himself at long last. He only showed him to a bedroll after having him wait outside while he embraced the man and then spoke to him for long minutes, gesturing at Nicolo every once in awhile. Now he gives him expectant looks when they need to go somewhere, directs Nicolo to help him with his tasks, to sit beside him at meals, even encourages him to join in the conversation with their generous host when it seems that he has enough of the local language, the one this man seems to favour in his home.

To Nicolo’s absolute bewilderment, the man likes to make _him_ smile, too. Teases him about his strange eyes and quiet broodiness, and even facilitated the first time he and Yusuf grinned at each other, poking fun at the increasingly well-worn familiarity of their arguments. He even shows Nicolo to his personal library, and when he admits he’s lacking reading skills in all languages but Latin, the man _thwaps_ Yusuf on the head with a softer book and insists he’s been a poor companion for not sharing his knowledge.

That’s how their reading lessons begin, and to Nicolo's glee, Yusuf finally begins to soften to him when he realizes that he is, in fact, happy to learn and discover new ways of thinking.

The man is _kind_. Everybody Yusuf has brought them to has been kind, good and kind and generous, and it gets harder and harder everyday for Nicolo to cling to the beliefs that made him sail over here in the first place, to believe in the promise of absolution, to believe in _anything_ the same way he once did. Though there are churches in this city, and the Christians mingle relatively freely with the Muslims and the Jewish, particularly among scholars, Nicolo finds he only has the capacity to pray in solitude, to try and reconcile all of this new information with God alone, away from what he’s realizing is only one of many institutions who worship, and, he admits quietly to himself, perhaps none more rightly than any other.

Today, they are delivering correspondence regarding some complicated market law or other that Nicolo doesn’t really understand, though he’s been assured it is of utmost importance that they deliver it quickly and safely, swords mounted at their waist. He knows that the man Yusuf is working for is important enough to receive a steady stream of gifts, figs and money and beautiful fabrics, but he’s yet to grasp what it is that he actually does.

Their argument is admittedly a pointless one, today. But it fills the silence of a dull trek through a stretch of desert. More and more, these private conversations are starting to feel relaxed, almost playful, like when they talk during meals with the kind man, and Nicolo’s favorite, when they pour over the texts in the man’s library and Yusuf eagerly smiles and shares and teaches.

Finally, Nicolo loses his patience. “You’re lying! Everybody knows that the earth is flat.”

Yusuf shrieks again in frustration, disbelieving grin transforming his whole face. It makes Nicolo grin too, despite the absurdity of it all. Honestly, the earth as a sphere. Who would even conceive of such a thing? Let alone try and convince another man of it? Yusuf had tried to argue his point with math and the names of philosophers Nicolo had never even heard of before they started working through their host’s library, and so he really can’t be sure where such a ludicrous idea came from.

Yusuf switches tacts, then. “Don’t you find it strange, Nicolo, that when you watch a ship sail away into the distance, it seems to disappear over the horizon at a certain point, rather than grow smaller and smaller, as it would if the earth were flat?”

Nicolo’s mouth hangs open, thoughts whirring. He can’t say he’s ever paid attention to such a thing. Has Yusuf, truly?

Yusuf latches onto his momentary uncertainty, suddenly turning and charging forward into Nicolo’s space, seizing his shoulders and pushing his forehead into Nicolo’s, laughing, not wavering even a little as Nicolo’s hands come up to catch him at the waist.

“Admit it! Admit that you’re wrong!”

Nicolo looks into his joyous face, laughing despite himself. He feels strange, suddenly, heat crawling up his neck, flushing his cheeks, hyper aware of Yusuf’s hands on his shoulders and his on Yusuf’s hips. They’ve done this countless times before in the heat of their anger. He’s tasted Yusuf’s rage many times, his spit and blood and furious breath. But never the warmth of his happiness.

“I was wrong,” he breathes.

(He isn’t talking about the shape of the earth.)

But it doesn’t matter, because Yusuf cheers and squeezes his cheeks, laughing loud and free and knocking their foreheads together again before he finally rips himself away, or it seems that way to Nicolo, slowly acclimatizing to his warmth so close, resuming their walk at a brisk, eager pace, leaving Nicolo to stumble after him.

“I _told_ you. Oh, you strange, strange man. What am I ever going to do with you?”

He asks this, still grinning, and Nicolo understands that he doesn’t mean it the same way that he did when they were still killing each other.

He smiles back, and knocks his shoulder against Yusuf’s.

4.

It had been the kind man hosting them who told them about the beautiful bathhouse in the city, and had recommended taking a visit after they completed their tasks for the day.

Nicolo had thought he must have been exaggerating. Black and white marble, cool and warm water that comes from taps. It sounded too good to be true.

Now that they are here, he’s amazed.

Not only is the place beautiful, just as they’d been told, all gleaming marble and quiet, respectful men, the whole building smelling wonderfully clean, like soap and perfume, but there is so much _space._ Huge stalls and plenty of them, easy privacy.

Nicolo is confused about how to conduct himself, at first. He watches some men go into stalls in pairs, and some go alone.

He has bathed beside Yusuf many times, in rivers and in the sea. Using cloths and stream water, either cold in buckets or boiled in pots over a fire. In bathhouses far less nice than this.

Here, however, it would seem a startling intimacy. There is also the issue of the incredibly tangled up and confused nature of his feelings for his companion, made ever more complicated just the previous night, when Yusuf had read to him and talked at length of the poetry of some artist he admires, a man named Abu Nuwas who wrote about scandalous things that make them both blush, leaning close to whisper to each other in the quiet of night, Nicolo trying to puzzle out all the new ways he watched Yusuf’s eyes glow and gleam, helplessly observing the features he’s grown so familiar with, close enough to smell his skin, for their hands to brush as they gestured to each other, their thighs pressed together for how close they’ve pulled the pillows they sit on, trying to convince himself the poetry alone was the reason his pulse was racing.

He startles now, shuffling his feet when Yusuf’s finger jabs at his bare side, catching him blushing, staring after two men who seem to be _holding hands_ as they slip into their stall.

Yusuf grins, frustratingly pleased as he always is to catch Nicolo in a moment of uncertainly. His eyes are sparkling how they’d been the previous night, and Nicolo is overwhelmed.

He half-seriously steps forward and thrusts out his head, playfully miming at head-butting Yusuf before ducking around him and hiding himself away, alone, in the privacy of a stall.

He hears Yusuf giggle, the laughter drifting strangely in the echoey space as he no doubt goes to find a stall of his own.

5.

Something bad happens in the desert years later, long after they departed from the generosity of the man who helped them become friends.

They’re making a longer journey, Yusuf once again putting his knowledge and expertise forth, this time to act as a travel guide. Nicolo is acting as extra security, sword constantly at the ready.

Distressingly, it’s the client who turns on them. He’s some angry fellow who seemed down on his luck, who Yusuf had already agreed to lead to the nearest city despite the man not having anything to pay them, having promised he would scrape something together once in the city.

In the night, he slits Nicolo’s throat first. Nicolo comes back to with a gurgle soft enough that the man doesn’t hear him, just as the man is making his way over Yusuf’s sleeping form.

He makes a mistake, though, tripping up, so that Yusuf wakes and shouts, scuffling and fighting.

Nicolo snarls and dives, knocks the man, thin and hungry, off to the side, snapping his neck.

When he turns back, he’s practically nose to nose with Yusuf, reaching out for him. His hands don’t retract when Nicolo turns to him, only coming up to cup either side of his neck, feeling his rapid pulse as their foreheads knock together, feels the warm smudges of blood on his skin, already smooth again, knitted back together.

“Are you alright, Nicolo?”

He sags, then, exhausted, collapsing right into Yusuf’s arms. He’s warm, and solid, and safe. It feels fluid to Nicolo, inevitable to feel those arms fold snug around him, bringing him closer than ever before.

“If you are alright, Yusuf, then I am alright.”

It feels like a confession, and Yusuf’s gasping breath, the swell of his chest are the only things grounding Nicolo to the earth, the tightening of his arms, his fingers curling tighter and letting Nicolo know that it’s well received, cherished.

“You are alright,” Yusuf informs him, curiously rubbing his nose against Nicolo’s. The two of them are trembling under the moonlight, just left of a forsaken corpse, two days travel from the city where they will establish their first home together. “You are perfect, Nicolo.”

+1.

Nicky laughs, throwing his head back against the pillow and snorting when he realizes what Joe is up to, watches him make an exaggerated movement to shove his sketchbook and pencil underneath the pillows when he glances up and finds the weight of Nicky’s bleary eyes, his half-asleep smile on him.

After all they got up to in this very bed the night before, he’s surprised Joe’s managed to wake up so early, let alone wake first. Though, Joe probably figured the same of him, and that’s precisely why he’s made the effort.

“Very sneaky, Joe. Taking advantage while I am _defenceless_ , asleep.” He yawns, words coming out deep and garbled and probably unintelligible to anybody else in the world but he and Joe, happily wiggling his toes underneath the soft, warm sheets. Right now, there’s nothing he wants more than to remain in this bed, forever and ever and ever.

Joe growls, warm and playful, leaning down over him and knocking their foreheads together with mock aggression, twining their fingers. Presses smiling kisses under Nicky’s chin, up his jaw, towards his ear, cuddling up right on top of him, warm and safe, nestling and nudging and wiggling and kissing until Nicky is giggling underneath him.

“I don’t know _what_ you are talking about, Nico. You have insisted time and time again that I am a tasteless fool for thinking your sleeping form to be the picture of contentment and beauty and peace, and I have _listened_ , like a good husband, and would _never_ take advantage of you while you sleep.”

Nicky looks into Joe’s wide, earnest eyes, tilting his chin up so that their lips brush without even thinking about it. Sighs, melting back into the pillows when Joe kisses him properly, halting and smiley, sweet as can be.

Except for his left arm, which he uses to fish the sketchbook out from under the pillow, smacking Joe in the side with it as soon as he gets his fingers around it properly.

Joe gasps, all bravado, making a scandalized face. “What’s that you have there? Where did that come from? A stowaway in our bed?”

Nicky shakes his head at him, running his fingers over the looping engraving of Joe’s given name over its leather cover.

You reach a thousand years together, the anniversary gift has to be special. Nicky made sure to bind lots of his love into this sketchbook, into Joe’s name, the Abu Nuwas verses on its front and back.

Joe finally flops down next to him, gently taking the book from his hands. Then he turns his head towards Nicky, nudging up against his nose and then his forehead once again.

He whispers, eyes sparkling, “say, however, that I _had_ done such an evil thing as to depict you, my sleeping beauty, between these very pages.” He waggles his eyebrows, conspiratorially. “Would you want to see?”

Nicky kisses him, overwhelmed momentarily with the weight of all these years, endless memories of all the times in their past lives he’s been looked at just like this, by these dark, earnest eyes, all the times Joe has eagerly laid out the contents of his heart for Nicky to pour over, blurring together and overflowing in his own chest, all of his love, all of his reverence. All the times they’ve met, in each place throughout their forever, with the press of their bodies, their lips, their foreheads knocking together, their hearts and souls as one.

Eventually, between deep, slow, wet kisses, he manages to whisper back, breathless, “yes. I’d like to see.”

**Author's Note:**

> title from twin size mattress by the front bottoms


End file.
